This is the website/blog of Philosopher Stephen Law. Stephen is Provost of Centre for Inquiry UK, Reader in philosophy at Heythrop College, University of London, and editor of the Royal Institute of Philosophy journal THINK. He has published several books (see sidebar). His other blog is THE OUTER LIMITS: http://www.centerforinquiry.net/blogs/blibnblob
For school talks and media email Stephen: think-at-royalinstitutephilosophy.org
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I think there are only two types of people who are attracted to study philosophy...

1/ Those who wish to search for truth.

2/ Those who wish to search for justice.

Interestingly, in my experience I find these two "searches" mutually exclusive...one is either drawn to one or the other...NEVER both...

Philosophy is like Psychology...in fact this is what it has in common with Theology...

I still haven't come to the conclusion that Philosophy is scholarly...

It is a form of "knowledge" but whether it is scholarly knowledge...I doubt...I mean, you can't make anything with philosophy...no power in philosophy, like theology...but it can make one feel better mentally like psychology...

I am very fond of stating that 'philosophy is the art of throwing BS and sounding intelligent while doing so.' Primarily because of the ways that apologist make use of it.But I like philosophy and know that to do it well improves your methods of laying out coherent thoughts and ideas.

I think philosophy plays a significant role in terms of pointing out what we don't really know for sure. This gives rise to the consideration of multiple variable influences for knowledge, creating a certain kind of intelligent perspective. See philosopher.io

From my limited experience, I'd say that the method of philosophy is argument, which is also how it is presented. It teaches you to be analytical and insightful and to think deeply about what you are talking about.

While I don't doubt Philosophy is useful in terms of self-development, such development does not pay the bills. I am from a working class background myself and a primary consideration must be the jobs you can do with your chosen course of study. Philosophy doesn't, at least not directly, afford one many options. It seems to me that you can either teach it or write books, or both but not much else.

Education to degree level is mostly a one-shot deal for working class folk. If you get the oppertunity you had better make it count. If you pick something with decent monetary return you might be able to afford additional education further down the line. You really don't want to be in the position of being utterly unconnected from any employment above manual labour (I mean no connections through friends or relatives to better oppertunities), and a philosophy degree.

Practical implies the "empirical", meaning what we can "measure", i.e. photons, electrons, etc...so with regards to quantum physics say, one does not require philosophy to support a physics theory because it can be empirically valid without recourse to metaphysics, i.e. what IS a photon?...what IS an electron?

It is only when these types of metaphysical questions are asked that philosophy has any role in science.

I mean, think of the discovery of the Higg's...We use theory/calculations to predict tracks in a bubble chamber, from the experiments we infer the trajectories we see in the bubble chamber are "particles" flying through the chamber leaving tracks...

However, what is wrong with this is that really what we are seeing is a succession of bubbles...AND the mistake is to link them together...because in quantum theory "stuff" does not have trajectories...instead they are simply independent "events"...

This is when philosophy comes into play with science...it is in the interpretation of these events...and with it perhaps certain insights that may point in a new direction of research.

Science needs, and has always needed, philosophy because the former is ultimately an inductive process through which we are hoping to draw accurate conclusions about the universal from a mere sample.

Philosophy has been instrumental in figuring out the ways to strengthen that inductive process and mitigating its innate weaknesses. Unfortunately, things such as the importance of a good falsifiable hypothesis and avoiding post hoc theorizing &c are being forgotten, and it's clear that this is having negative consequences. There's a real problem both in the biological sciences and in psychology right now with failure to reproduce findings, even the really important ones (there was a pharmaceutical firm that reproduced something like 50 landmark experiments and only succeeded in reproducing 20% of them). In a small number of cases this is due to outright fraud, but in many cases faulty experimental design and inappropriate use and interpretation of statistics is key.

On top of that, there's this trend for government funding agencies to encourage, and sink tremendous amounts of money into, whimsical Big Science investigations. Ones that are too often driven by some vague, ambiguous, and usually conceptually dubious goal (see Genome Project, BRAIN Initiative, Protein Structure Initiative and similar ill-conceived boondoggle fishing expeditions).

So, yeah, philosophy is important to the efficiency of the scientific method, which has clear cost benefits both in terms of time and money. Frankly, I think a philosopher should be employed in every life science department (scientists seem to be cottoning onto the usefulness of having a resident statistician in the house, so maybe there's hope for us yet).